_ CHAPTER XXVI
The next afternoon she sat waiting for Joe. She had come home the night before feeling so strong and sure of her course. But beginning at the moment when she came into the empty apartment, subtly and by slow degrees again her home had cast its spell, as though the rooms were haunted. "I've got to lay the ghost," she thought. She had telephoned to Joe to come, and he had replied abruptly, "All right, I'll be there about four o'clock." It was just that now. Ethel poked the logs in the fireplace until there was a cheerful blaze. As she straightened up she caught sight of her face in the mirror over the mantel. Even in the firelight how gaunt and strained it looked to her.
"Not very attractive," she grimly thought. "This has got to be done by brains, my dear."
In a moment she heard Joe's key in the door. She heard him taking off his coat and then coming slowly into the room. With an effort she turned and looked at him. His face appeared even more tense and grey than it had two days before; the nerves seemed quivering under the skin. And she felt a pang of pity. "He wasn't to blame for the way he acted, it was his wretched nerves," she thought. "He'll have a break-down after this."
"Well, Ethel!"
"Oh, Joe, I'm so glad you're here." All at once she felt herself change. She had meant to be so firm with him; but now, after one quick anxious look, in a low eager voice she said, "I'm not going to talk much of myself. It won't do any good--I'm sure it won't. I love you, Joe, and I can see you still love me. We need each other. And if we can just be sensible now--and you can only believe in me--"
"God knows I want to, Ethel!" His tone was low, but so sharp and tense that she drew suddenly closer. He turned from her and sank into a chair, with his hands for a moment pressed to his eyes. "I'm sick of this--I'm not myself. Maybe I acted like a fool. . . . Some of that stuff from Fanny Carr doesn't hold together--it's too thin." He looked up at her. "But some of it does. And what you'll have to clear up now is why you never let me know."
"The reason I didn't," she answered quickly, "goes way back into the past. And it's not only about you and me--it's about--about somebody else." She stopped and her throat contracted. She set her teeth. "We must talk about Amy for a while."
There! At last she had brought it out! And she had seen her husband flinch. For a moment both were silent.
"Why!" he asked. She swallowed hard.
"Because we never have before. We've--gone two years without speaking her name. I had no idea how bad that might be." She broke off, for her voice was trembling so. "I don't know how much you've learned in that time--about Amy, I mean--but I've learned a lot, and--I think I'd better tell you. I must, you see, or you won't understand what I've been doing lately. I couldn't have explained before, without speaking of her--and I didn't do that. But I should have, Joe, and I will now--if only you'll be patient and let me do the talking."
"Well!"
"Some of it goes so very far back." She leaned forward with a queer little smile: "Amy was good to me when I came--and I had always worshipped her--I thought she was nearly everything. She made me feel how she--loved you, Joe--she had ambition, urged you on. But--oh, I've got to try to be clear. What kind of ambition was it, Joe! What did you have before you met her? How did you used to look at your work! You were coming up to do big things--but you married her and your work all changed. You threw over ideals to make money for her. And when your partner tried to hold you, Amy tried to break up the firm. Didn't she? Don't you remember?" She waited, but he did not speak. "How hard it is for him," she thought, "to admit a thing against her. This won't be easy." But she felt a little thrill of pride in him.
"So Bill has been talking, has he," he said.
"Yes, I made him." She went on. "Amy set herself against him--and against all your other old friends. Not at first--I want to be fair to her, Joe--don't think I'm blaming just her for all this. I'm sure that at first she was different--she wanted your friends to take her in. Remember those dinners you took her to, and that week-end party up in Vermont!"
Joe looked at her sharply:
"Who told you that?"
"Sally Crothers," said Ethel. "She was there."
"Sally Crothers? You know her!" he demanded. She smiled at the startled look on his face.
"Why, yes," she replied "You see I've been hunting so hard for you, Joe, among those friends you used to have. And I did it without ever letting you know. Dwight, too--he was only one of them." She frowned, and added briskly, "Just incidental, so to speak. But I don't care to talk of him now--I'm speaking only of Amy. And from what Sally Crothers has told me, poor Amy must have had some hard times. They weren't fair to her. If they'd given her time and a real chance, everything might have been different. But they didn't, they turned her down. And feeling hurt and angry--and feeling besides how she'd have to grow--in her mind, I mean, and her interests, to take any place among people like that--I think she hesitated. You might have helped her then, perhaps--but you didn't--and Amy was lazy, Joe--that had always been a part of her. So she wouldn't make the effort. Instead of coming up to you, she made up her mind to pull you down!"
"That isn't true!" he said harshly. "And if you've been taking for God's own truth what Sally Crothers told you--"
"Stop! Please!" cried Ethel eagerly. "I didn't mean what I said just then--I put it badly--oh, so wrong! She didn't say, 'I'll pull him down.' She told herself your friends were snobs! And she said, 'I have friends who are human, and they're quite good enough for me!' So she went on with Fanny Carr. And others came, the circle grew. And it was all done day by day, and week by week. It happened--and you never knew. Nor did she. It was all so natural. But within a year she was going with people, and so were you, who cared for nothing you had wanted--women with no growth at all. They were all--oh, so common, Joe!"
"That's a bit snobbish, isn't it?"
"You can call it what you like! But I say you can find them all over town--richer and poorer, better and worse--women who want only common things--just clothes and food and what they call love--with not a wish that I can see except for money to live like that! I'm no prig, Joe! I want pretty clothes, and I want to be gay and have nice things. But you can get all I want of that and still get what is so much more!" Her voice dropped; she hurried eagerly on: "Real work you love and which makes you grow, and friends that keep you growing! Ideas and things to know about--and beauty, music, pictures--the opera--books and people, plays--and buildings! The new library--the station--the--the tower down on Madison Square! Your work, Joe! And your old friends! Men and women who really think and feel--not just alive in their bodies! I don't know much about all that. Do you, these days! Mighty little! Because she kept you away from it!"
"No!" But she caught the uncertain look in his eyes.
"Are you so sure? Why didn't she ever go to Paris? She must have been dying to go there and shop, but she never let you take her there. She was afraid to let you go near it again--the Beaux Arts work, the student life--afraid that you'd get thinking! So she kept you here and away from your friends. She even kept Crothers out of your firm. You partner fought her hard on that--and you held out--until one day Crothers came to your office and told you he had changed his mind. You remember?"
"Yes--"
"Did he give you his reason!"
"Yes--he did--"
"Did he bring Amy into it!"
"He did not--"
"He should have, Joe. For just the afternoon before, Amy had made a call on his wife--and had said things insulting enough so that her husband had to break off!"
"Sally told you that!"
"Why should she lie?" Ethel threw a quick glance into Joe's eyes. "He believes it!" she thought, and hurried on: "I've talked to her, Joe, in a way that was bound to get the truth. Oh, I've been hunting hard for you, dear! If Fanny Carr had told her detectives to follow me everywhere I've been, and not just hunt for the nastiness that was in her own mind about me--they could have shown what a hunt it has been! I had so little time, you see! You were all in the balance--you'd waited so long! Even now you've found you can't draw the plans--the ones you used to dream about! I know because I made you try! And I went to Nourse, to your old friend Dwight, and then to Sally Crothers--and asked them all to help me. And as I went on and learned about you as you used to be, I fell in love all over again with the man I found--not Amy's husband--mine, all mine!
"And I had almost got you back--when Fanny Carr, with her nasty view of me and what I was doing, brought you those perfectly rotten reports? And if you believe them, Joe, I'm through! Go to Nourse or to Sally Crothers, and they'll tell you I have spoken the truth. If you won't believe either them or me, go on alone without me--or else marry Fanny Carr. But if you do believe me and we're to go on together now, you'll have to drop Fanny for good and all, and leave Amy way behind. You'll have to take up your old friends and try to get Crothers into your firm. You may think your business is yours and not mine--but if it's my life, it's my business, too! It's like four walls around me now, and I want to break out and so do you--away from mere money! I've watched you, dear--seen what a struggle has gone on inside of you--it has worn you out! haven't you made money enough? Let's leave it, go to Paris, and get to work before it's too late for you to get back what you had! And if there's no money, never mind. It will come later on--but don't let's be afraid if it doesn't. Don't let's be afraid of pain--of fighting hard and suffering, Joe! I want more children! I want you! I want you mine, all mine, my dear--not her husband. Don't you see?"
She had been eagerly leaning toward him. Joe was staring into the fire; the look in his eyes had frightened her and made her hurry to be through.
"What is it?" she asked. And she waited a moment. "Don't you believe what I've told you, Joe?"
"Yes," he said, "I believe all that. I believe a good deal more than that." There was a little silence, and then suddenly he reached for her hand, held it tight and smiled into the fire in a twitching sort of way. "I haven't been quite as blind as you think. I've seen a good deal of what you were doing. But--" he frowned--"I'm older than you are. I know this job of mine clear through--way back to those dreams you spoke of. I've had some hard mean tussles about it--lately--and that's my only excuse for acting like a damn fool as I did--the other day. No use in talking of that any more--or of--Amy either. She's--dead."
"Joe!" Ethel whispered. Tears came in her eyes. He went steadily on:
"She had some fine points--you'll never know. There were things we needn't talk about now. But you've made me see things, too. I don't think she'll be in the way any more--I think we'll be able to speak of her."
"Of course! We must! I want to, dear!" Ethel's voice was shaking.
"Not now." With an effort he rose. "There's something else to worry about. You don't quite know me yet, you see."
"What do you mean?" She had risen, too, and caught his arm. "You're not well, Joe! You're white as a sheet!" He laughed a little.
"I'm not quite right. Something wrong in here, I guess." He pressed one hand to the base of his brain and scowled as though it hurt him. "Nothing serious, probably. But before it goes too far, I want you to know that when I get well I'm going to have a try at all that--the work you spoke of. I'm going to try--_but I may be too late! I may be older than you think!_" The tone of his voice was sharp and strained. "I don't know," he said. "The doctor may. About him--that's another point! It's a nerve specialist we need! Telephone your doctor and have him send one here tonight! I'm sorry, Ethel--damnably!" _